When Time Stands Still
by RubyFiamma
Summary: [8059] [Major Character Death] [Suicide] Gokudera doesn't have a lot of time, except that he does and he doesn't know how to handle any of it.


**Pairing: **Yamamoto Takeshi/Gokudera Hayato

**Fandom: **Katekyo Hitman Reborn!

**Rating: **M

**Warnings: ****Character** **Death**,** Implied/Referenced Suicide**, Heavy Angst, Emotionally Repressed, Thought Projection, Transference, Mental Breakdown, Mental Anguish, Mentions of Drug and Alcohol abuse

**Word Count: **827

**Notes: **I was sad and I'm sorry

**When Time Stands Still**

* * *

><p>Sometimes you sit there for hours, your expression blank and your limbs numb and everything around you is eerily quiet but you can't turn the volume down on the static noise that buzzes frenetically inside your head. You grit your teeth, you cover your ears but that can't stop the sound. You get drunk, you take pills —- despite your <em>hatred <em>for all things medicinal —- but no amount of haze can muffle the shrillness.

You watch the clock hands move, tick like a time bomb waiting to go off except it's an eternity before you get to the explosion. There's no countdown to chaos, only seconds, minutes, hours, days. And despite the clock that tells you time, it holds no meaning for you. The sun rises and falls but there are no days. Just a really long stretch of nothing.

You're lonely without him. You have friends, you have your boss, you have your _dream _job. Your life has meaning_._ Until you realise that he's gone and it doesn't. Until you realise that he _was_ your dream.

It sounds ridiculous but it isn't. He's given you life and friendship and love when no one else would and you thought you could handle being alone before but —- without him, nothing makes sense.

You're lost and your moral compass says _stay__ —- __stay __for __the __family__, __stay __for __the __tenth _but that isn't what you really want. You want _him _and nothing else.

There's noise, _so much __noise _and you want to scream and cry and break things but you've already been through that and you don't have the energy for it anymore. Your apartment —- _our __apartment_ when your mind refuses to allow you to accept what's happened and move on —- is desolate and destroyed. There are no more pictures of you and him, there are no more trophies, glass cases holding stupid, _meaningless _stuff —- there is _nothing _that you haven't destroyed in hopes of destroying the memory of him except his ghost wanders free every time you walk in to your bedroom, loops of him turning and smiling at you run on replay like someone's forgotten to change the reel on a bad romance film. His scent lingers on every fabric, his laugh echoes loudly in your ears and his touch burns your skin but it never leaves a mark. You can't get rid of something that refuses to leave except he _ha_s and he can't return. And that to you is life's finest attempt at a cruel joke. Especially when you close your eyes and you can still feel the gentle brush of his lips kiss you goodnight.

But the question is what would you do if you couldn't feel anything at all? It's about that time know, you know. For your answer.

You can't feel his touch or his lips, you can't hear his laugh or him calling your name. All you hear is _tick __tick __tick __tick _—- that _insistent _ticking that's telling you it's time —-it's _time _to make a _decision_ and it's so fucking _pushy _—- why can't it slow down and just give you a minute to _think__. _Hurry, hurry_,__hurry _as if you don't have all the time in the world —- it's nothing but white noise and you just can't fucking get one thought in no matter how hard you try and you just want everything to be _quiet _—- just _please _be _quiet__._

And it hits you. It really _hits _you. Like the fastest line driver flying at you at 106 mph —- set by Aroldis Chapman in 2011, breaking his previous record of 105 mph set the year before and you _shouldn't__ know this _but you do. The fact that you've retained it is validity enough to know what you're planning to do is _logical__. _Because that's you, right? Everything has to make _sense _—- you make decisions based of facts and not _feelings__. _It hits you so fucking _hard_ that suddenly everything just makes perfect sense. You can actually think —- crystal fucking clear clarity. And for once, you hear the silence and it _hurts__. _Because now you realise just how much you love him and just how much you'd sacrifice for him.

Everything —- isn't it? You'd sacrifice everything for him, just like he did for you when he took that step in front of you and shielded you from that incoming bullet. His love had no boundaries, no rules. He's an _idiot _but he's your idiot and you _can't _live without him. You just can't.

The red ribbons are stark on your skin and god, you feel stupid but you finally feel quiet. You finally feel _free_.

You watch the clock hands move, tick like a time bomb waiting to go off except you won't be waiting for an eternity for something to happen. There are only minutes and maybe seconds before you get to see him again, when time stands still.

There'll be no countdown to chaos. Only peace.


End file.
